Boy, that sounds good! What happens if you cheat a little more and add the raw chopped cabbage to the sauteing onion, like they do Fried Cabbage in the South? What’s the advantage of cooking the cabbage first? john

When I get a halushki craving, I usually cheat and make it this way to save time:

Boil 1/2 package of bowtie-shape egg noodles until just barely cooked in a pot of water with a can of condensed chicken broth added. Drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, chop a well-cored medium head of cabbage into pieces of about 3/4 inch. Put into a microwaveable casserole with a couple spoonfuls of water, cover and cook on High for about 8 minutes, stirring once or twice. Drain. (You might need to do this in more than one batch.)

Coarsely chop two onions. Melt one stick of butter in a large, deep frying pan or Dutch oven. Add the cabbage and onions and cook over medium low heat for at least an hour, stirring often, until the onions are carmelized and the cabbage has turned a pale gold color. Along the way, add generous amounts of salt and pepper to taste. Mix in the noodles and a tablespoon or two of water, cover and steam for 10-15 minutes to heat the noodles.

Or you can make the noodles when the cabbage is almost done and serve it as a topping over them. Some people like to mix in the noodles about halfway through the cabbage cooking process.

The members of the church our family belongs to make hundreds of pounds of halushki for our summer festival. It consists of homemade thick wide egg noodles mixed with cabbage and onions cooked long and slowly in pounds of butter. No potatoes in it or served with it.

Halushki to us was made with potato noodles, cabbage,onion and butter but if mom had no time she would short cut using egg noodles.

The potatoes noodles are made by grating a potato mixing in flour eggs and salt to form a dough. Then with a spoon you rip off a small piece of dough and drop it in to boiling salt water and when it floats to the top the noodles are done. It takes a lot of time to make enough noodles for a meal. It kinda of looks like she is knitting when she really gets going( with the spoons and dough)

Having grown up in Western PA about 25 miles north of Pittsburgh, halushki was called "coal" food and not "soul" food because nearly everyone back then either worked in the coal mines or in the steel mills. My father’s parents came from Yugoslovia and Austria and we often ate halushki which was boiled WIDE egg noodles topped with cabbage and onions that had been slowly simmered in bacon fat or butter (wow! wonder we didn’t all weigh a TON!). I don’t recall ever having potatoes in this dish. All the Polish, Ukranians and Serbs grew up eating this dish, along with pierogi of course and halupki (cabbage rolls). Another good example of "coal" food is sauerkraut and bean soup (grah i kupus in Serbian).
Recently while having dinner at my parents’ house I asked my Dad and Uncle what their favorite food was growing up: it was unanimous: grah i kupus. I just made some a few weeks back and it was awesome.
My mother, on the other hand, whose parents came from Northern Italy (Torino region) answered the same question: gnocchi.

quote:

Originally posted by Jellybeans

Hi guys! I was just wondering if anyone can straighten me out on what Halushki actually is.

You see, when I was editing an international community charity cookbook this year, one of the people donated a recipe for Halushki which is potato-based and Czech/Polish in origin.

Today, I was browsing through some blogs and one blogger gave a recipe for Halushki (comparing it to one she got off a cookery website) as Cabbage with Noodles. Also Czech/Polish/Hungarian in origin but ne’er a potato in sight…

According to the ladies I used to work with in Pittsburgh. Halushki is an "All American Dish" made and served everywhere all over the country. Of course I never heard of Halushki until I move to Pittsburgh. Basically it’s Noodles, Cabbage and Butter. Of course many of the women I now work with in Rhode Island insist that Portugese Kale Soup along with Chourice and Potatoes are also "all american" and served up everywhere!